Lucy Jones didn’t intend to create shock waves when she registered for a Twitter account over the weekend.

Yet with several significant earthquakes and their aftershocks rattling the greater Los Angeles area in recent weeks, that’s exactly what the internationally recognized U.S. Geological Survey seismologist did with just a few strokes of her keyboard.

Less than 24 hours after her first tweet on Saturday about one of several sizable aftershocks that followed Friday’s 5.1-magnitude temblor near La Habra, @DrLucyJones had more than 4,000 followers and was the recipient of an outpouring of gratitude from curious to downright edgy Southland residents wanting to know what all the shaking was about.

“I was actually trying to understand what it meant when somebody told me I was ‘trending’ on Twitter and ended up signing up for an account,” Jones acknowledged Sunday after slipping out of a prayer service at the historic Church of the Angels in Pasadena, an Episcopal church, to speak to a reporter by phone. “I didn’t see any other way of getting the information; I realized later that I didn’t have to do that. ... Then when (Saturday’s) aftershock happened, I thought I would give some information (on Twitter) and the whole thing snowballed.”

And the rapidly expanding Twittersphere couldn’t be happier. For just over three decades, the frequently-quoted Jones has been a USGS seismologist and a visiting research associate at Caltech’s Seismological Laboratory. This year, in what Los Angeles officials have hailed as a historic partnership, she’s also serving as Mayor Eric Garcetti’s science adviser for seismic safety and is now based at City Hall about four days a week.

“She has been the most effective interpreter — whether it’s for an at-the-moment description of an earthquake or for long-term planning necessary to make sure we have a prepared city — she really is the face of earthquakes in Southern California,” Garcetti said Sunday.

In her new role, Jones is tasked with creating earthquake resilience strategies including strengthening vulnerable buildings and ensuring that water infrastructure is safe after a major temblor, he said.

“If I had to create an expert out of clay, I couldn’t have done better to find someone as well respected, as knowledgable, as able to bridge the divide between theory and practice as Lucy,” Garcetti said.

Jones, 59, of Pasadena is a fourth-generation Southern Californian and grew up in the Los Angeles area hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which sparked her interest in the physics of the Earth and its environment in space. She met husband Egill Hauksson — also a seismologist — at a 1980 conference on earthquake prediction in New York.

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“It was the only good thing that came out of it,” she said wryly. “He was a grad student at Columbia and I was a grad student at MIT.”

Jones, who has two grown sons, is inspired to study earthquakes and other activity that occurs beneath the Earth’s surface, she said, for the same reason she’s in church: to help people.

“People don’t realize they have choices to make here,” Jones said, noting that she desires “to help people understand the science that can make their lives better.”

In an effort to increase resilience to natural disasters in the region, Jones created and led the Multi Hazards Demonstration Project, which integrated hazard science with economic analysis and emergency response. That ultimately became a national project that she leads, called the SAFFR Project (Science Application For Risk Reduction) that applies USGS science to reduce risk in communities around the country.

For Jones, working as an adviser to Garcetti is another chance to apply this valuable research to the real world where it can help save lives.

It’s “the most terrifying” thing she’s done in her career, she said, since working on policy issues is very different than doing seismic research but it’s also the most important.

“I grew up loving this place. I want my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to enjoy it,” Jones said of Southern California. “I really see the biggest earthquakes as imperiling the future of Los Angeles so (this is) the chance to use the science to change the outcome.”

Jones, who has played both the cello and the viola da gamba for decades, said she’s hopeful that City Hall will be able to implement her suggestions. And with the recent earthquakes the region has experienced, the time may just be ripe to do so.

“There’s no question that the earthquakes help people remember why we’re doing that,” she said.